Lennon, still aching and with tense muscles, removed from his mind the essence fruit he had claimed in his last hunt. His hands trembled slightly – not from fear, but from the weight of the moment: handing over something so precious to those who could easily destroy it.
He extended the fruit. The instant the demonic guardian and her warden saw it, their eyes widened. The room seemed to freeze for a moment – the quality of the fruit exceeded any expected standard. It was as if all the power he had accumulated in battle was concentrated there, pulsing in intense red, almost alive.
The guardian approached, fascinated, almost licking her lips, snapping her fingers with impatience and desire.
He raised the essence fruit, still pulsating in his hand, as if it exhaled life itself. The reddish light reflected in the monstrous eyes of the audience, which howled and salivated like trapped beasts sensing the scent of fresh flesh.
He announced in a voice laden with triumph.
"Behold this fruit! Maximum quality! Even in the greatest spectacles, we've never seen such glory… like this, our domain will never lack quality!"
The audience erupted in cheers, guttural shouts, claw and paw applause. The sound was deafening, like thunder.
Then the guardian turned her gaze to Lennon, cold, cutting:
"More fruits, Forgotten 666. Deliver what you hunted."
A heavy silence fell.
Lennon, still kneeling, gasped.
His body throbbed with memories of previous deaths, his throat dry, heart racing.
He swallowed hard.
There was nothing left.
The only fruit had been that one.
In a fragile voice, almost apologetic, he said:
"I… have nothing else."
The arena shook. The sound of demonic laughter and whistles echoed like waves of scorn.
The guardian froze her smile, her gaze poisoned.
To her, those words were not just a reply… they were an insult.
Before Lennon could react, his warden appeared behind him.
Out of nowhere, a black sword materialized in his hand – thin, cruel, cold as a nightmare.
The steel pierced his back in a single stroke, bursting through his chest.
Lennon's eyes widened.
A primal scream tore from his mouth, loud, raw, echoing throughout the arena.
Hot blood ran from his mouth and the rags he wore, staining everything red.
His entire body convulsed, trembling, grasping for the air that escaped him.
The audience went wild.
Frantic applause, laughter, hysterical screams.
It was a spectacle.
They thrived on his pain.
The other prisoners lowered their heads, some closing their eyes, others trembling in silence. No one dared look.
The guardian's voice came like a blade:
"Arrogant prisoner… do you think a single fruit is enough to collect, especially with your usefulness?!"
The warden twisted the sword inside Lennon's body, and he coughed up blood, gasping.
The pain was unbearable, a fire inside him.
"You despicable useless creature!" – the guardian roared.
Then came more stabs.
One after another.
The steel tore not just through his clothes, but his flesh, cutting deep.
Each blow made Lennon scream louder, his voice shredding in his throat.
The sound of bones breaking, muscles ripping, skin splitting echoed like a macabre symphony for the crowd.
He felt it all.
Each thrust was like fire under his skin.
His eyes rolled, his body contorted, yet death did not come immediately.
It was pure, prolonged torture, designed to make him a spectacle until his last breath.
The audience did not stop.
Some clapped in rhythm, others shouted the domain's name, others simply laughed with mouths full of deformed teeth.
Lennon, almost powerless, thought of fainting… but even that was denied.
The pain was so real, so absolute, it seemed to carve itself into his soul.
It was hell.
And he was the center of the stage.
Once again, Lennon tried to open his eyes.
But now it wasn't just pain holding him… it was fear.
Fear of waking to another death, another torture, another hell.
His body trembled, breaths short, like an animal that had already given up fighting.
When he finally forced his eyelids open, his vision was blurred, but the truth soon asserted itself:
He was lying on the cold floor, chained at wrists and ankles, pinned to a damp wall.
In front of him, only bars.
The silence wasn't complete.
There was a low, guttural sound, like a collective moan.
Lennon, seized by dread, dragged himself to the bars, each movement heavy, as if his chains weighed tons.
When he raised himself to look… he froze.
The scene before him was a layered nightmare.
A vast abyss of iron and despair.
Over twenty floors of cells stacked in a circle, all packed with prisoners.
Some stood motionless, like breathing corpses; others swayed back and forth, murmuring disconnected phrases, eyes empty.
Some prisoners cried softly, silent tears streaming over faces hollowed by hunger.
Others laughed alone, hollow, lunatic chuckles, as if their minds had long since shattered.
And there were those who merely stared into nothingness… glazed eyes, lost pupils, dead expressions, yet alive enough to suffer.
Each floor was the same, a suffocating repetition of agony.
Pale skin, protruding bones, bodies too thin to hold dignity.
Some bore visible marks of torture.
And the most painful thing for Lennon wasn't just seeing them… it was feeling.
Feeling that, in this place, hope did not exist.
The men and women before him no longer begged for salvation, not even for a swift death.
They had accepted the eternal – the eternal prison, the eternal suffering, the eternal oblivion.
Lennon recoiled slightly, heart racing, eyes brimming uncontrollably.
Reality crushed him: there was nowhere to run.
Those bars weren't just iron.
They were pure despair.
Here, everyone was just forgotten.
It was impossible not to think about it all.
But what tortured him most wasn't the memory of physical pain.
It was the feeling that each of these deaths had no meaning at all.
He died, returned. Died, returned. Died again… always to fall into an even deeper hell.
With each return, a piece of his mind was left behind, lost somewhere in that eternal prison.
He pressed his cold forehead against the bars, eyes welling uncontrollably.
The question echoed, cruel, hammering in his mind:
"Why me? Why am I here? What is the purpose of this? That cursed pact!"
The voice of the demonic guardian returned to memory, echoing like a whip:
"First Forgotten to have legendary usefulness…"
He clenched his fists. Legendary?
What was legendary about dying like an animal before a crowd of monsters?
What kind of usefulness was that, if all he could do was be thrown into the mud, bleed, beg, be destroyed, and wake again?
His eyes fell to the prisoners on the floors below.
Hundreds… maybe thousands.
All of them with stories, pasts, names that no longer meant anything.
Now, they were just "Forgotten" and a number.
And for the first time, Lennon felt a mortal chill:
"Is that what I will become too?"
It wasn't the fear of dying.
It was the fear of continuing to exist like this.
Lennon closed his eyes, breathing deeply, trying not to give in to despair, but he couldn't.
His mind screamed: "It's over. There's no way out. You're already lost."
And, for the first time, he began to believe it.
Suddenly, before his eyes, a translucent window broke through the darkness:
[Cosmic Event triggered: Even after your death, the world still venerates you, and some call you the God of Pop.
Your popularity and recognition have not gone unnoticed by the cracks of the cosmos.]
[Path Unlocked: You can transcend the human race.]